Other Stuff

Put to a vote, I might have been chosen “least likely to succeed” in my New York City high school class. My path has taken me from repairing fighter planes in Thailand during the Vietnam War (a member of the Society of Wild Weasels), to spook stuff in undisclosed location(s), and I was lucky enough to arrive at the beginning of the boom times of Silicon Valley in 1978.

After 21 years in 8 high technology companies, I retired in 1999. I co-founded my last company, E.piphany, in my living room in 1996. My other startups include two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers, a workstation company Convergent Technologies, a consulting stint for a graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar, a supercomputer firm, Ardent, a computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac, a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL and a video game company, Rocket Science Games.

Total score: two large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com bubble home run (E.piphany) and several base hits.

After I retired, I took some time to reflect on my experience and wrote a book (actually my class text) about building early stage companies called Four Steps to the Epiphany. It’s been called the book that launched the Lean Startup movement. My latest book, co-authored with Bob Dorf, The Startup Owners Manual integrates 10 years of new knowledge (and fixes lots of typos.)

I moved from being an entrepreneur to teaching entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University, Columbia University, NYU and UCSF. The “Customer Development” model that I developed in my book is one of the core themes in these classes and the core of the Lean Startup movement. In 2009, I was awarded the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in the department of Management Science and Engineering. The same year, the San Jose Mercury News listed me as one of the 10 Influencers in Silicon Valley. In 2010, I was awarded the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business.

All my coursework, syllabuses, and presentations can be found here. In 2012 I put my Lean LaunchPad class on-line and over 250,000 students are taking it. The NY Times had a few things to say about my work here, here and here.

In 2014 I took the UCSF Life Science curriculum, and in conjunction with the National Science Foundation, we developed and launched the I-Corps@NIH program. Four National Institutes of Health divisions; NCI, NHBLI, NCATS and NINDS sponsored 21 teams in therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices to accelerate how research gets from the lab bench to the bedside.

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Innovate Like a Startup: Book a Talk by Steve Blank

Steve Blank electrifies corporate audiences with actionable tips for how to drive continuous innovation sharing the same battle-tested processes that Lean Startups use to achieve success.

Steve is the co-inventor of the Lean Startup movement, a serial entrepreneur-turned-best selling author and educator who has changed the way startups are built, how entrepreneurship is taught, and how big companies and the U.S. government innovate. He is the author of the startup bibles The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual, books that entrepreneurs of all stripes rely on to build successful ventures and corporate and government organizations use to deal with disruption. His Harvard Business Review cover story, Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything, explained how companies could use the Lean Startup to implement innovation at speed.

Best Fireside Chat we’ve ever heard. My company learned a lot about dealing with disruption. We made changes right after the conference.

CEO Fortune 1000 Company

Steve Really Helped Define the Role of Chief Innovation Officer and how to think about an innovation pipeline.

Chief Innovation Officer Fortune 1000 Company

Steve’s dynamic presentations draw standing-room crowds at startup conferences, corporate meetings, university commencements and similar events, where he offers insight on such topics as:

Dealing With Disruption: How culture, process and people need to adapt and adopt in the world of continuous disruption.

Entrepreneurship vs. Innovation: What is the Difference and Why Does it Matter? Steve explains why innovation inside an existing company or the government is different from building a startup, highlighting the different tools and mindsets needed to be a successful innovator or entrepreneur

Harnessing Your R&D Department: How every federal research agency adopted Lean Startup methods to commercialize science – 1,500 teams of our best scientists and counting – and learn how your company can as well.

Creating an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Silicon Valley’s role as an entrepreneurial powerhouse has its roots in the Cold War, not a Palo Alto garage. Steve explains how the Silicon Valley came to be and how you can create an entrepreneurial ecosystem in your region.

Watch Steve

3 Types of Corporate Innovation

Innovating Inside a Big Company

Continuous Disruption

The Secret History of Silicon Valley

Steve is also a frequent speaker and unofficial historian on how Silicon Valley came to be. His Secret History of Silicon Valley talk is considered the standard history of why entrepreneurship blossomed in Silicon Valley while stillborn elsewhere.